Thursday, October 27, 2011

Empathy: A Friend Of Democracy

There are many respects in which America, if it can bring itself to act with the magnanimity and the empathy appropriate to its size and power, can be an intelligent example to the world.

—J. William Fulbright

A human being is a part of a whole, called by us "universe", a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest... a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.

—Albert Einstein

The great secret of morals is love; or a going out of our nature, and an identification of ourselves with the beautiful which exists in thought, action, or person, not our own. A man, to be greatly good, must imagine intensely and comprehensively; he must put himself in the place of another and of many others; the pains and pleasure of his species must become his own. The great instrument of moral good is the imagination.

—Percy Bysshe Shelley

When you bring up the idea of empathy, you usually get one of two reactions or responses from people. "I think it's important, and I wish I were more empathetic" or "Empathy is unnecessary for humans to act morally." It's interesting to note that persons who have sociopathic tendencies or, more important, who have been diagnosed as sociopaths all, without exception, lack empathy. That is to say, they could not relate to their fellow human beings as persons, and as such were able to commit horrific crimes without any remorse.

Many scientists consider such humans as suffering from a genetic anomaly or mutation; others as conditioned by their environment. Most, however, would agree that both genetics and environmental factors have come into play, the only argument being in what proportion. Evolutionists focus on genetics; social scientists on social conditions.

This is not to say the opposite is true, that if you lack empathy, you will become a criminal or develop sociopathic behaviour. This is obviously not the case. You can do very well in society today without displaying any level of empathy. In fact, a lack of real empathy might make you a good leader today, whether in business or politics or as a political commentator. I suspect many business CEOs and politicians and hard-boiled political pundits truly lack empathy, thus giving them the appearance of confidence and certainty in their views. The same goes for many religious leaders.

But who knows what lies beneath that veneer of sophistication? What might appear as moral certitude and earnestness might be little more than a hidden lack of empathy combined with hubris. It might be better if our leaders had more empathy, an ability to connect with persons who think in a different way. Disagree? Most certainly. Ignore and disregard? Of course not.

Yet, we have gone further into the abyss of uncivil discourse. We don't ignore our political and business adversaries; we mock and try to destroy "opponents," using the symbolism of sport and the "need" for victory at all costs to achieve some justifiable end. We have allowed our baser emotions to come to the forefront, using the guise of honesty as our reason, our excuse, but something far more noxious is at work. At times we frame our hardness in moral terms of right and wrong, but do so in a crude way without much thought or understanding. Also lacking in today's discourse is compassion, a cousin of empathy. But that's another topic for another time.

Empathy & Character

Such is the way things are, having come to this point through poor understanding of ourselves. For many, compassion and empathy are signs of weakness, bad for future advancement. Which naturally leads to the question of why bother showing genuine empathy if it doesn't improve my career prospects? The short answer is that empathy forms one of the fundamental building blocks of a healthy and well-operating democracy, its importance undeniable (see here, here and here).

On a personal level, empathy makes you more of a human being who has a greater ability to connect with others. Yes, it's often important to view yourself in another person's shoes, if only to understand their actions. Such a response does not necessarily mean you condone immoral or unethical behaviour, an argument used by the hard-edged and thoughtless to avoid any sign of empathy. Rather, it is a sign of humanity and democracy in action, where the individual is important.

Is it wishy-washy if you think, for example, it is bad government policy to cut off benefits for working single mothers or for the poorest of the poor while billions are spent on the war industry? Or to feel sad when millions of American children are living in shelters? Or to think it bad policy for corporations to reduce health or pension benefits for its employees while enriching its chief shareholders? No, such shows empathy, a valid emotion in response to bad policy decision. Empathy is a democratic emotion that often leads to policy change, bettering the lives of millions of individuals.

After all, one of the chief reasons for being human is to connect with other humans. It's also better for civil society if humans act more civilly to each other, a characteristic that we are losing. If we desire a better society, we might consider the need for empathy.

It's interesting to look at what Gustav M. Gilbert found out. Gilbert was a German-speaking American prison psychologist and a military intelligence officer who was assigned to Nuremberg prison in Berlin, where 23 Nazi war crimes defendants were being held. Afterward, he wrote an account of what took place, Nuremberg Diary (1947), which includes a professional opinion on what he learned:

I told you once that I was searching
for the nature of evil. I think I've come close to defining it: a lack
of empathy. It's the one characteristic that connects all the
defendants. A genuine incapacity to feel with their fellow man. Evil, I
think, is the absence of empathy.

2 comments:

Empathy is extremely important, but it can be undone by blind faith. The people who sentenced witches and heretics to death in the Middle Ages probably looked upon themselves as merciful and just people who were doing what they could in order to defend society from black magic and damnation.

All comments ought to reflect the post in question. All comments are moderated; and inappropriate comments, including those that attack persons, those that use profanity and those that are hateful, will not be tolerated. So, keep it on target, clean and thoughtful. This is not a forum for personal vendettas or to create a toxic environment. The chief idea is to engage, to discuss and to critique issues. Doing so within acceptable norms will make the process more rewarding and healthy for everyone.﻿ Accordingly, anonymous comments will not be posted.

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Yiddish Sites (listed since August 2017)

There are dozens of sites dedicated to Yiddish language, culture and music. Here are some that I have found noteworthy. I will add to the list regularly. If you have a Yiddish site or know of one, please do not hesitate to contact me atpjgreenbaum@gmail.com:

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Afn Shvel(“On the Threshold”), a magazine published by the League for Yiddish, dating to 1941, it is committed to the promotion and preservation of the Yiddish language and culture. It published two double issues a year. Its editor-in-chief is Sheva Zucker;

American Jewish Archive at Hebrew Union College’s Jewish Institute of Religion contains more than 10 million pages of documents. manuscripts, genealogical materials, as well as thousands of audiovisual recordings, photographs, microfilm and digital collections;

Center for Jewish History, in New York City, has 5 miles of archival material (in dozens of languages), more than 500,000 volumes, as well asthousands of artworks, textiles, ritual objects, recordings and photographs;

JewishGen Yizkor Book Project, a database of more than 1,000 yizkor books worldwide, a good number of them have been translated from Hebrew and Yiddish into English;

Language and Cultural Atlas of Ashkenazic Jews,from Columbia University,consists of 5,755 hours of audio tape interviews with Yiddish-speaking Jews from Central and eastern Europe, done between 1959 and 1972 along with around 100,000 pages of linguistic field notes;

Lexilogos, a compilation of Yiddish online resources, including dictionaries, grammar books, and a translation of the Torah (Toyre) in Yiddish;

Milken Archive of Jewish Music, a record of the American Jewish Experience; since 1990, it has become the largest collection of American Jewish music with about 600 recorded works, including a number in Yiddish;

Museum of the Yiddish Theatre, an online museum originating in New York City and founded by Dr. Steven Lasky, has in its collection such items as photographs, theatre programs, sheet music, audio recordings and other documents of some importance and historical significance;

Pakn Treger, (“itinerant bookseller in Eastern Europe who traveled from shtetl to shtetl ”), the magazine of the Yiddish Book Centre;

Recorded Sound Archives (RSA) of Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton contains more than 100,000 recordings of music, a great many in Yiddish;

Songs of My People, a site by Josephine Yalovitser dedicated to Yiddish songs of mourning and of joy;

The National Center For Jewish Film, based at Brandeis University in Waltham, Mass., is the home to 15,000 reels of feature films, documentaries, newsreels, home movies and institutional films, dating from 1903 to the present; this effort has led to the revival of Yiddish cinema;

Yizkor Book Collection at the New York Public Library provide a documentation of daily life, through essays and photographs and the memoralizing of murdered residents, of Jewish communities destroyed in the Holocaust. Of the 750 yizkor books in its collection, 618 have been digitalized. Most yizkor books are in Yiddish or Hebrew;

YUNG YiDiSH, a site dedicated to preserving and promoting Yiddish culture in Israel;